What's wrong with Wizards?

[Combo]

Did a search and really couldn't come up with a thread that properly answered this, so...

What's wrong with Wizards? I remember way more being on Live than I see here, and I keep seeing them get trashed on these forums (not to a Ranger degree, but still).

I know Mages are kings of everything in Classic, but don't lures become pretty important in order to reliably deal magic damage post-Classic? Is it because of the notorious AFK Wiztard legend? Or is it because the class is just boring/pointless to play, as other classes (Mage, Necro) just do their job "better" than Wizards?

[Ploppy]

They don't get strong until Kunark and Velious. They were always a weaker class in original EQ, but people were begging for them later. Add mana batteries and lures and it's a field day for raid dps.

[Friday]

wizards in classic: Levelling
Cast 1 nuke results in 2 scenarios
A. you pull threat and die
B. you /sit and afk until 3 mobs later.

wizards in raiding:
A. Port everyone to destination
B. Cast ice comet. resisted.
C. Afk until wizard loot drops.

As long as your sitting and meddling, everyone assumes your doing your job. Hell, when i was leveling, i was AFK 50% of the time.

[Fawqueue]

They don't get strong until Kunark and Velious. They were always a weaker class in original EQ, but people were begging for them later. Add mana batteries and lures and it's a field day for raid dps.

This is true. Although they do have at LEAST one thing that makes them my favorite groupmates now: AoE. Get yourself two enchanters, a cleric, and three wizzies and xp faster and better than any group before! Provided you can find the mobs to keep it up anyway..

[Ploppy]

AE groups are drooling over karnor's basement already I am sure.

[Kamasu-WV]

Can't beat the thrill of quad kiting. And I would rather be a wiz than a druid. Fo reals.

[odizzido]

The only thing wizards can do better than any other class is port.

The three main rolls in EQ are tank/dps/cc

Unless you get an AE group, their sustained DPS is probably lower than a SK for xping.

They have root so they can CC, but so can other root classes and an enc is far better anyways.

wizard tank?...yeah....

For boss battles wizards can be alright since that isn't sustained DPS.


The one time I think wizards can genuinely be useful for standard xping is when you fight caster mobs. A fair number of wizard spells have a spell interrupt component even if it's not a stun spell. If the wizard saves all mana for the caster mobs and just chain casts those spells they can lower the amount of damage a group takes by quite a lot. Of course for this to work well you need a SK or pally to hold agro.

[Omnimorph]

Wizards admittedly aren't fantastic in classic, but as you go to kunark and then to velious, they become better and better.

And the AE group is where it's at in kunark. First people to 60 will be the people who are doing AE groups :p

[Henini]

I remember meeting up with a group of 4 wiz on classic not long after I started. for some reason they invited me to their group in perma ( I was a rogue).

they pretty much killed everything that agroed before it got to them.

went something like:

1
2
3
nuke

mob makes a step and dies

and yeah as it's been said, aoe groups are the way to go for leveling. nothing like a group dicimating over half of HS on their own.

[Combo]

So do Wizards get useful in Kunark or Velious? I might level one as an alt if it's Kunark, otherwise I'll just wait.

[Ishio]

They wanna be like Gandalf, but SoE decided when EQ first came out, that they'd have none of that.

[oddibemcd]

[QUOTE=odizzido;165309]The three main rolls in EQ are tank/dps/cc
[QUOTE]

Everybody get your roll on? Think you are forgetting the priest role in your list.

[Fourthmeal]

Wizards are fun in classic PVP

[JackFlash]

I played a wizard on live for 10 years. To each is own :) I always found a way to challenge myself.

[RKromwell]

So do Wizards get useful in Kunark or Velious? I might level one as an alt if it's Kunark, otherwise I'll just wait.

Really, yer gonna level one after Kunark comes out? Wouldn't it be better to level now and then get all the 50+ goodies right away?

[Messianic]

Wizards are kinda junky in terms of sustained DPS in group situations. They can be very effective in a tough spot where you really need to drop an add/caster/healer mob very quickly, but that requires them to sit on about 50% of their mana pool. Hence the junky sustained DPS.

In terms of travel, Druids have far better port locations overall. If Lavastorm/Feerrott ports weren't enough, they also get the important ports early on (WC for druids at 29, wizards don't get it till 39).

Gfay and Plane of Hate/Sky are the only ports that are "better" than druid ports. I really wish wizards had been given some kind of Qeynos hills port, or moved the WK wizard platform near the Qeynos Hills zoneline. That would have rocked...

As for Druids - theyre mostly "better," including built-in-sow, more efficient soloing single mobs, if you're just after a really powerful character with ports...If you want a primary character with the best ability to gather materials for tradeskills, track, etc, Druids far exceed wizards.


However, come Kunark and Velious, wizard AoE's become obscenely mana-efficient. The ratio difference between the 51+ pillar spells is far and beyond anything they had before 50. I remember quad-kiting twice before having to med in the velious era, which was absolutely crazy exp.

Expect to solo from 29ish-60 very quickly in Kunark/Velious if you know what you're doing as a wizard. But expect the grind from 1-24 to be really, really boring. At 24 you can full-speed quad pretty effectively in certain undisclosed locations ;) You can do it earlier than that, but it's just not as effective or reliable as camping quick-spawn good exp mobs, such as Osargen in HK or Saben Tucross in lfay. That is, unless you have the $$ for unlimited sow potions or MQ jboots...

[Kava]

A wizard was my main on Live from day one, to GoD. I loved playing him everyday, soloing or grouping; you just have to learn how to be useful to any given situations. Nothing wrong with dropping mobs quickly towards the middle/end of each battle to avoid aggro, and end each fight faster.

Are they more useful once Kunark comes out? Most definitely, and more deadly overall.

As for ports, some people prefer a druid port over a wizard port (and vice versa) for the odd zone ports each class gets (Druid/wizard; butcher/Gfay; Surefall/WestKarana; Lavastorm/Nektulos; Feerrott/Cazic respectively)

If YOU enjoy playing them, you can be very useful by learning the class.

Ironically, I am playing a Druid ATM because he is much more enjoyable at this stage, but my wizard is slowly levelling to get ready for Kunark and Quad Kiting hehe...

[Messianic]

As for ports, some people prefer a druid port over a wizard port (and vice versa) for the odd zone ports each class gets (Druid/wizard; butcher/Gfay; Surefall/WestKarana; Lavastorm/Nektulos; Feerrott/Cazic respectively)

Druids won't get surefall gate on this server at all, IIRC regarding when it was added. Regardless, the WK portal is relatively useless. The NK spires are a stone's throw away. Since the wizard can't sow others, I'd rather have an NK port with a level 50 sow than a WK port from a wizard and jboots if i'm heading to permafrost (the lvl 50 destination if i'm headed that direction).

Gfay is only a slightly better port than Steamfont/Butcher.

Nektulos is two zones from Nro or WC, already existing Wizard ports which are closer to more often desired destinations (EC tunnel). Lavastorm puts you right next to Sol B. It's easily better.

Cazic portal requires an invis unless you're suicidal, isn't as condusive to group porting as Feerrott is, and isn't as close in overall travel time to the Plane of Fear or Guk (common 50 destinations). If you're using it under level 45ish, pray your invis doesn't break in the maze.

[Kava]

Agreed, I was just giving examples. Preference to ports is situational to each person, not a class deciding factor. And by situational, I mean to the rider, not the caster. I had a lot of people specifically ask for a Cazic port, to join a group there, and a lot of people laugh at me when they just needed to get to The Feerrott.

And yes, I've always hated the WK port, as it is redundant. They spires should have been placed much closer to the Q Hills zone.

[stormlord]

I haven't played a mage or wizard on p1999, but when Iwas doing old man mckenzie missions I played mages and wizards several times. What I noticed was that mages greatly helped the group with their pets and damage spells whereas the wizards had only slightly better damage spells (more types though) and no pet. The wizard might have had a few other plusses, but overall, in my groups we never did it without a mage and wizards were kind of like rangers in their usefulness. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but this is how it worked.

I don't know. It seemed like wizards didn't really have a niche in the missions. Yes, they have more spell types but this wasn't really a concern most of the time. Their spells aren't significantly better and don't make up for not having a strong pet like the magician did. I could count fingers on one hand the number of times I might have been thankful we had a wizard, but that was mostly because we had a gimped group. Mages were always a big help. The missions were limited in scope, so maybe this isn't a fair assessment of the wizard class.

Old Man Mckenzie missions are level 50 content that's supposed to be similar to how it was back in the day. It's an instance you enter from POK. They're in nagafens lair, undead guk, live guk (no undead).

I think a lot of it has to do with what your group is doing. I know that hybrids tend to be a lot more useful when you're in a new place and dangers surprise you. But once you got everything figured out and you're into a pattern, I think the value of hybrids drops like a rock. They're really, i think, meant for dynamic situations that're borderline chaotic and tend towards isolating group members from one another. In situations where they're packed together and organized it's better to have specialized members that excel in certain areas. I mean, what good is a cleric heal if the cleric isn't nearby to heal you? What good is a enchanter if they're too far away to mez or slow? What good is a rogue if they can't get behind the mob? What good is a melee that can't invis if there's no one there to invis them? Etc. There were lots of examples in the old man mckenzie missions where I couold see the benefit of having hybrids, but once i figured things out and knew what to do I just couldn't justify having hybrids in hte group. Call it powergaming, but it's just a tactical reality in gaming.

I'm not saying wizards are hybrids. I'm saying that maybe the range of challenges in hte missions I did were not appropriate for the wizard to truly shine. This though would be just like a hybrid. If a group is challenged in certain ways you will see certain classes doing well and others not. It depends on what you're doing.

[Messianic]

I haven't played a mage or wizard on p1999, but when Iwas doing old man mckenzie missions I played mages and wizards several times. What I noticed was that mages greatly helped the group with their pets and damage spells whereas the wizards had only slightly better damage spells (more types though) and no pet. The wizard might have had a few other plusses, but overall, in my groups we never did it without a mage and wizards were kind of like rangers in their usefulness. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but this is how it worked.

I don't know. It seemed like wizards didn't really have a niche in the missions. Yes, they have more spell types but this wasn't really a concern most of the time. Their spells aren't significantly better and don't make up for not having a strong pet like the magician did. I could count fingers on one hand the number of times I might have been thankful we had a wizard, but that was mostly because we had a gimped group. Mages were always a big help. The missions were limited in scope, so maybe this isn't a fair assessment of the wizard class.

Old Man Mckenzie missions are level 50 content that's supposed to be similar to how it was back in the day. It's an instance you enter from POK. They're in nagafens lair, undead guk, live guk (no undead).

I think a lot of it has to do with what your group is doing. I know that hybrids tend to be a lot more useful when you're in a new place and dangers surprise you. But once you got everything figured out and you're into a pattern, I think the value of hybrids drops like a rock. They're really, i think, meant for dynamic situations that're borderline chaotic and tend towards isolating group members from one another. In situations where they're packed together and organized it's better to have specialized members that excel in certain areas. I mean, what good is a cleric heal if the cleric isn't nearby to heal you? What good is a enchanter if they're too far away to mez or slow? What good is a rogue if they can't get behind the mob? What good is a melee that can't invis if there's no one there to invis them? Etc. There were lots of examples in the old man mckenzie missions where I couold see the benefit of having hybrids, but once i figured things out and knew what to do I just couldn't justify having hybrids in hte group. Call it powergaming, but it's just a tactical reality in gaming.

I'm not saying wizards are hybrids. I'm saying that maybe the range of challenges in hte missions I did were not appropriate for the wizard to truly shine. This though would be just like a hybrid. If a group is challenged in certain ways you will see certain classes doing well and others not. It depends on what you're doing.

From playing a wizard through 56 on live and having a friend who was a 60 mage through the velious era, this is basically true.

Mages have more reliable, sustained dps and only slightly worse nukes. Not that wizards suck, but they aren't part of the "perfect" group (if having a perfect group is necessary).

[Ghordo]

Did a search and really couldn't come up with a thread that properly answered this, so...

What's wrong with Wizards? I remember way more being on Live than I see here, and I keep seeing them get trashed on these forums (not to a Ranger degree, but still).

I know Mages are kings of everything in Classic, but don't lures become pretty important in order to reliably deal magic damage post-Classic? Is it because of the notorious AFK Wiztard legend? Or is it because the class is just boring/pointless to play, as other classes (Mage, Necro) just do their job "better" than Wizards?

play what you want and stop asking people retarded fucking questions.

[girth]

If you want a raiding character for Velious, wizard is highly needed for dps and mobility.

I wouldn't make one if you won't be raiding on him though.

[enzie]

I wouldn't make any class if you aren't planning to play them until Velious.. I mean, Kunark isn't even out yet. Get to 50 on a character you'll enjoy getting to 50 on, then see how you still feel when your 60 in Kunark, and twink out an alt.

[Quineloe]

Wizard had zero utility in classic, what I enjoyed about my wizard from luclin to the 1 week I endured GoD was that I had no "keep this buff up on everyone throughout the entire time we have this group going" buffs that the other casters all came with but instead I had highly situational utility spells that were awesome. Like evacuating really, really fast (0.1 second, could actually do that while running), translocate and port. Plus a wide variety of nukes, stuns and combinations of both that were either powerful or efficient.

A classic wizard has nothing of that. All they have is maybe 3-4 nukes that are worth memming at their current level which all have atrocious ratios (my best nuke right now has a 1.42 ratio. ISOS has a ratio of 4 in comparison. It also takes many levels until a Wizard can actually port other people around. I think it takes until 34 until a Wizard has a decent set of spells to port people around with, which you need if you actually want to go to a different dungeon with your group. No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

[Estu]

No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

This is a bit naive as often times people have pick up groups rather than pre-organized ones, so if you port to GFay and run to Unrest, you're pretty likely to find a group there already who will take you.

[Acillatem]

Wizard had zero utility in classic, what I enjoyed about my wizard from luclin to the 1 week I endured GoD was that I had no "keep this buff up on everyone throughout the entire time we have this group going" buffs that the other casters all came with but instead I had highly situational utility spells that were awesome. Like evacuating really, really fast (0.1 second, could actually do that while running), translocate and port. Plus a wide variety of nukes, stuns and combinations of both that were either powerful or efficient.

A classic wizard has nothing of that. All they have is maybe 3-4 nukes that are worth memming at their current level which all have atrocious ratios (my best nuke right now has a 1.42 ratio. ISOS has a ratio of 4 in comparison. It also takes many levels until a Wizard can actually port other people around. I think it takes until 34 until a Wizard has a decent set of spells to port people around with, which you need if you actually want to go to a different dungeon with your group. No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. On a raid - I have 2 stuns, root, snare, and nullify magic memmed. We offer a lot more than nukes. Some mobs it's more important to keep it stun-locked than it is to just nuke it for 8% of it's life. Revenants in Hate? I don't even nuke them. I usually stun/stun/nullify (get rid of dmg shield) rinse repeat. Keeping them stun locked prevents AE wipes and charm annoyance. It's much more "raid efficient" for me to stun lock than it is to nuke it for 8%.

In Fear - I'm easily one of the more active secondary crowd control members of the raid. I keep an /assist ENC hotkey so when their pet charm breaks I toss a stun so they can re-charm easier, I'm not nuking mobs as soon as the mob is engaged so I have time to help ENC with snares/root parks etc. Granted the RNGs are usually on top of this, it's pretty common knowledge that if you have 6 mobs in camp on a Fear break and your ENC team dies, the raid is screwed.

Yes, a wizard's primary job is to burst DPS - but any wizard who solely chooses to focus on this aspect of their class and not actively utilize the other options we have is simply a bad wizard IMO.

Even at lower levels you have options. You can help root park adds, you can stun/interrupt healers, etc. I think people just wanna be lazy and nuke and that's it, but like I said - on a raid? I only have 2 nukes memmed - Ice Comet and Conflag and that's it - the rest is utility spells to help the raid.

[Quineloe]

Sorry, but I beg to differ. On a raid - I have 2 stuns, root, snare, and nullify magic memmed. We offer a lot more than nukes. Some mobs it's more important to keep it stun-locked than it is to just nuke it for 8% of it's life. Revenants in Hate? I don't even nuke them. I usually stun/stun/nullify (get rid of dmg shield) rinse repeat. Keeping them stun locked prevents AE wipes and charm annoyance. It's much more "raid efficient" for me to stun lock than it is to nuke it for 8%.
This is nice and all that, but this is not your average wizard gameplay. In order to get there, you need to get through many, many days /played of being exactly what I mentioned - a 1 nuke every two mobs machine. I thought I made that clear.


Even at lower levels you have options. You can help root park adds, you can stun/interrupt healers, etc. I think people just wanna be lazy and nuke and that's it, but like I said - on a raid? I only have 2 nukes memmed - Ice Comet and Conflag and that's it - the rest is utility spells to help the raid. So you say "lower levels" and "ice Comet" in the same breath. :-)

We both know the utility Wizards offer for the first 35 levels is nowhere near to what the other casters offer. The thread was started because the OP didn't see many wizards. Maybe you can offer some insight why the OP is wrong or an alternative explanation if you don't think mine is correct rather than talk up a class that is clearly underrepresented compared other casters?

This is a bit naive as often times people have pick up groups rather than pre-organized ones, so if you port to GFay and run to Unrest, you're pretty likely to find a group there already who will take you.

You're smarter if you just /who the zone and tell the players that are least likely to afk - the clerics. BTW you make it sound like you gate to the zone and then leave your group if you can get a spot in another one right away. Either that or you replied with a completely unrelated scenario, which I don't understand why you would do that.

[Estu]

BTW you make it sound like you gate to the zone and then leave your group if you can get a spot in another one right away. Either that or you replied with a completely unrelated scenario, which I don't understand why you would do that.

Maybe I was confused about the scenario you were presenting. I just wanted to make the point that being able to self-port is useful for a wizard since you can get to the camp you want to get to faster, and then immediately start searching for a group (or, as you said, find a group first and then port to it); your implication seemed to be that it's useless because you are always with the same group, just moving to different dungeons, so you're only as fast as your slowest member.

[Quineloe]

Maybe I was confused about the scenario you were presenting. I just wanted to make the point that being able to self-port is useful for a wizard since you can get to the camp you want to get to faster, and then immediately start searching for a group (or, as you said, find a group first and then port to it); your implication seemed to be that it's useless because you are always with the same group, just moving to different dungeons, so you're only as fast as your slowest member.

Self port has extremely little utility for a group is what I meant.

[XDrake]

You ever meet one?